Opinion: Teacher Supports the Need for Annual Testing

Esther Cepeda recently returned to the classroom after several years away. She wrote an opinion piece on annual standardized testing that appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Aug. 27, 2016.

Cepeda wrote that that she supports the need for annual testing and recent polling shows a strong majority of Americans feels the same way. (See our post on last week’s Education Next poll)

Below is an excerpt from Cepeda’s opinion piece. Read the full story at Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Writes Cepeda:

I have multiple years of teaching in public schools already under my belt and more than 11 years of having two children in local districts. Throughout those experiences, I’ve never had a problem with annual standardized tests. And I’m not alone.

Results from the 10th annual survey by the scholarly journal Education Next were recently released. The survey asked a nationally representative sample of Americans about the state of education and found that between May and June 2016 — over a year after news accounts about parents’ opting their children out of school tests became commonplace — the public’s commitment to the use of standardized tests to assess students and schools remains firm.

“When people are asked whether the federal government should continue the requirement that all students be tested in math and reading in each grade from 3rd through 8th and at least once in high school, nearly four out of five respondents say they favor the policy,” the report states. “The percentage of people who oppose letting parents opt their children out of state tests is almost as high: 70 percent come down against opt-out. Those percentages remain nearly as high as in 2015. Finally, support for using the same standardized tests across states is higher than support for the [use of national education standards, a la Common Core]. Seventy-three percent favor uniform tests, though support is slightly weaker among Republicans (68 percent) than Democrats (76 percent).”